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Approximately a full year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the green light as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the team from nothing has required a intense work rate that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the Apollo program. As F1 converges on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the deadline is approaching.

The Countdown to Australia

At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with approximately three months to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, the Cadillac F1 project have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a never-ending challenge, they are cognizant there will never be sufficient time.

The technical director, Nick Chester, came aboard the nascent project in early 2023 soon after it was created, when the organization were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core from that point and has a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.

“You can have five minutes reflecting at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we have built in under three years,’” Chester states. “But then the very next instant you consider: ‘Yes, we still have a significant amount to do.’”

An Unprecedented Task

The CTO had success at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's victorious campaigns of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the task of introducing the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry supported by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Establishing an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the possibility to change team culture.”

With each day that passes focus are increasingly concentrated on the impending critical moment in the Australian GP and goals are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that any new team coming in is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon noted recently and while Chester echoed this he felt the squad had a point to prove as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We seek to prove that we’re a proper team performing the right things on the race track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement from there on.”

Racing Talent and Team Building Push

In August they contracted Sergio Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for 2026, a pair notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the leading positions in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull Racing and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the sentiment of fighting spirit.

“Certainly, we are pragmatic,” Bottas stated. “We face a massive task to do, and it’s going to be most likely a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to remain at the rear. I believe with this setup, with this team, these personnel, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in full swing, with employees now at over 400 and intended to reach the objective of 600 members quickly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the squad are in the midst of completing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the General Motors facility in North Carolina, where they are developing the center to manufacture the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the aerodynamic facility in Germany. It is a intricate organisation, different from the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the new cultural approach to which Nick Chester referred.

Space Mission Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked the team principal just before the British Grand Prix in the summer. “We have a clear-eyed view, we recognize how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. Alright, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a flat management structure akin to that of Nasa’s, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on different aspects of the project in a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a protocol where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their manager, that manager consults a manager somewhere else, it is relayed back, the process is very slow,” notes Nick Chester. “We give authority to team members to handle things directly. Moving away from management approval for each action is much smoother and more rapid.”

The Future

The efficacy of this flexible approach will be tested in the intensity of Grand Prix next season and there is a considerable amount at stake for Formula One, too. Cadillac have recruited as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta